Lexdon is reporting that Microsoft is forming a stronger relationship with Indian development powerhouse, Infosys. Im sure Im not the only one who has some big concerns with the level of quality churned out by the likes of Infosys and Wipro, and cant help wondering if things are set to get worse. Afterall Microsoft had a hard enough time turning out software without critical flaws when IT WAS paying its developers a decent wage.

Its almost becoming a joke now, it seems that companies are completely unable to keep their customers information safe. This comes as the news that Skipton, a UK building society has misplaced customer information.

The real question is why the government or whoever isn't fining these companies. Its probably because the UK government has admitted that its misplaced millions of records of data concerning parents, and child support payments (you know, that thing that you have to pay your ex-wife so she can by the latest xbox).

As well as being addicted to the web, I'm also a keen property developer. So I took great interested when RightMove, a UK property website completely overhauled its design, embracing Web 2.0.

In my opinion the site looks a lot clearer now, I did however like the layout of the old site with the floorplans etc all in the same place.

One problem persists however, and that is the fact that lots of estate agents seem intent on not putting up the full details of a property, and until this is overcome the site will never fulfill its true potential.

GlaxoSmithKline seems to have revamped their website. Interestingly theyve added an Ajax story browser to the main page. The site itself tries its best to make you think they are a soft company, but in truth I imagine they are quite opposite, afterall they charge people to stay alive.

Another interesting point is the site is littered with spelling mistakes! Oops!

Interesting that the darling of the internet world, Facebook, has a rather murky past. According to this article about the history of facebook, there might be some truth to stories that Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea.... interesting, but Im sure he can afford lawyers to make sure he keeps it!

Orange is without a doubt, the worst broadband provider I have ever come across.

To begin with, some bright spark decided to move technical support to India. When a user calls up they get an Indian call center worker with an impossibility heavy accent reading from a script.

While this does make for some funny moments, most derived from the inability of the operator to speak English (I was once told the system was under "upgradation"), it is mostly painful.

For the last two weeks my broadband has been down, after calling Orange every single day I have been told to call back in 24 hours no less that 9 times. This all stems from the fact that the Indian operators have no real power, if an engineering team had not logged an update in 48 hours they simply tell the customer to call back, instead of requesting an update from the engineers.

A more serious problem is that they are highly arrogant, and almost borderline rude. One had the audacity to say "You wouldn't understand the problem if I explained it". If reading from a script wasn't bad enough, reading from a poorly written one is awful.

All Indian workers are instructed they have to end the call with the same question. So a conversation can have a rather surreal moment when you say "So you are telling me that you cant fix the problem for another 4 weeks!". "Yes. Is there anything else I can do for you today?"

Orange is a cheap and horrible company, there is nothing good about them. Their broadband speed is among the slowest in the industry, and worst of all 20% of their upgrades to the LLU network are believed to fail.

The company hides behind its Indian help desk, and won't even give you another number to complain to.

More recently they have announced a deal with PC world, where you get a £300 laptop if you sign up with Orange for a 24 month contract. 24 months is excessive! Trust me, while the deal may look good on paper, in reality it is waste of time, you will find yourself without broadband more often than not, and paying to call the pathetic mess they call a help desk.

In summary, if you are with Orange, then I can only pity you. After threatening them with legal action they agreed to cancel my contract. I will be transferring away from them as soon as possible, as well as cancelling my mobile contract with them. I have no desire to ever do business with this company again, in fact, I intend to actively disuade others from doing so.

The Indian Bill Gates

If you believe the hype, then the CEO of InfoSys is the Indian version of Bill Gatse.... oh dear. NR Narayana Murthy was voted as one of the best CEOs in the world, as a result of the performance of his company.

It never ceases to amaze me. InfoSys has just announced record profits as more companies offshore work to them.

There is a huge lack of quality in work produced by companies like Wipro and InfoSys, afterall their job is to churn things out as fast as possible.

Its also becoming more of a myth that offshoring is cheaper, prices have risen dramatically, and when you factor in the time it takes to correct mistakes you quickly find you're spending more.

The lesson? Offshore with caution.

TrustE... not worth the paper its printed on.

I've always been skeptical of the truste certification program, mainly because its founding members are a bunch of big companies and the organization can hardly claim to be impartial., and who enjoy some good old back patting.

But what has made me even more furious is the pricing. A truste seal costs over $10,000 per year! This incredible pricing structure guarantees nothing, as their own terms of service shows how little they actually enforce.

For example, last year AOL (a founding member) disclosed 100,000's of subscribers info, including details on what they were searching for. And truste's response to this was? Nadda. Zip. Nothing.

It would appear that Apple has become a victim of its own success. The company suffered major outages to it iTunes site over the Christmas period has shoppers logged in to buy and give music.

The company also suffered outages to its normal store, as many people logged into to spend vouchers on iPods.

2007 may not be a good year of Apple, as analysts such as Gartner and Hasenmark are predicting as much as 5% of its market share could go to rivals.

Spyware could be a thing of the past, what with the advent of the Safe Download, and other programs like it. But lets be honest, as long as people are stupid enough to download programs without checking, spyware is always going to be a problem.

Its nice to see something like a Corporate Citizenship award, but to be honest does anyone actually think that companies do nice things because they want to? Most of the time they do them simply because it makes them look good. Imagine the mass of publicity that a company like Microsoft received when it funded an AIDS vaccined.

The Allied Journal is today reporting that Samsung is planning to invest a whopping 33 billion in research and development for new chips, whether the company can make good on this investment remains to be seen, maybe Intel will follow this?

A listing of interesting articles about the Imperial Mark.

Nice to see some ethics stuff making it in.
Ethics and Trust

Keira Knightley is up for an Imperial Color.

Nice to see something good is happening for someone! Oh well, life goes on.... Personally Id like to work at 72 New Bond Street.

Looks like Disney is suffering from a split personality! New article on Allied Journal called Disney Powersplit details the exact nature of the problem which seems to be troubling the magical kingdom. On another note, some pics of the Imperial Mark party, featuring some nice ones of Keira Knightley, yum!

Google, the web's most popular search engine seems to have back away from IPO. Read more about the Google IPO at Search Journal. In other news an Imperial Mark for the Tiffany Compnany of New York.... Breakfast anyone?

Interesting profile about the mega giant EDS, who seems to be snapping up all sorts of things at the moment.